"It's of no use. I suppose you're in league with the rest. I think the people in this house have hearts harder than stone."

"I'm very sorry for you, miss, if that's what you mean," said Mrs. Susan Sharpe, respectfully. "Yours is a very sad affliction, indeed."

"A very sad affliction! Do you mean being imprisoned here?"

"Oh, dear, no, miss!" looking embarra.s.sed. "I mean--I'm sure, I beg your pardon, miss--I mean--"

"You mean you pretend to believe Doctor Oleander's romance," interrupted Mollie, contemptuously. "You mean I am crazy!"

"Don't be angry, miss," said Mrs. Sharpe, deprecatingly. "I wouldn't give offense for the world."

"Look at me," said Mollie, impetuously--"look me in the face, Susan Sharpe, and tell me if I look like one insane!"

Mrs. Sharpe turned the mild light of the green gla.s.ses on the pale, excited young face.

"No, miss, I can't say you do; but it isn't for me to judge. I'm a poor woman, trying to turn an honest penny--"

"By helping the greatest scoundrel that ever escaped the gallows to keep prisoner an unoffending girl! Is that how you try to turn an honest penny, Susan Sharpe?"

Susan Sharpe, shrinking, as well as she might, from the fiery flashing of two angry blue eyes, murmured an inaudible something, and busied herself among the dishes.

"Listen to me, woman," cried Mollie, pushing back her wild, loose hair, "and pity me, if you have a woman's heart. This man--this Doctor Oleander--led me into a trap, inveigled me from home, brought me here, and keeps me here a prisoner. To further his own base ends he gives out that I am insane. My friends are in the greatest distress about me, and I am almost frantic by being kept here. Help me to escape--my friends in Now York are rich and powerful--help me, Susan Sharpe, and you will never know want more!"

Mrs. Susan Sharpe had keen ears. Even in the midst of this excited address she had heard a stealthy footstep on the creaking stairs--a footstep that had paused just outside the door. She took her cue, and made no sign.

"I'm very sorry, miss," slightly raising her voice--"very sorry for you, indeed. What you say may be all very true, but it makes no difference to me. My duty's plain enough. I'm paid for it, I've promised to do it, and I'll do it."

"And that is--"

"To wait upon you. I'll be your faithful attendant while I'm here; but to help you to escape I can't. Doctor Oleander tells me you're insane; you tell me yourself you're not insane. I suppose you ought to know best; but I've been in lunatic asylums before now, and I never yet knew one of 'em to admit there was anything the matter with 'em."

And with this cruel speech, Mrs. Susan Sharpe, keeping her eyes anywhere but upon the young lady's face, lifted the tray and turned to go.

"Is there anything I can do for you, miss?" she said, pausing at the door. "Is there anything nice you would like for supper?"

But Mollie did not reply. Utterly broken down by fasting, and imprisonment, and solitude, she had flung herself pa.s.sionately on the floor, and burst out into a wild storm of hysterical weeping.

"I'm very sorry for you, Miss Dane," the nurse said for the benefit of the eavesdropper without; "but my duty's my duty, and I must do it. I'll fetch you up your supper presently--a cup of tea will cure the 'stericks."

She opened the door. Mrs. Oleander, at the head of the staircase, was making a great show of having just come up.

"They'll be the death of me yet--those stairs!" she panted. "I often tell my son I'm not fitted to mount up and down a dozen times a day, now in my old age; but, la! what do young men care?"

"Very true, ma'am," replied the imperturbable nurse to this somewhat obscure speech.

"And how's your patient?" continued the old lady.

"Very bad, ma'am--'stericky and wild-like. I left her crying, poor soul!"

"Crying! For what?"

"Because I wouldn't help her to escape, poor dear!" said Mrs. Sharpe in a tone of commiseration. "She's greatly to be pitied."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Oleander, carelessly; "you couldn't help her, you know, even if you would. There's Peter, and Sally, and me on the watch all day long, and from nightfall we let loose Tiger and Nero. They'd tear you both to pieces in five minutes. Tell her so, poor creature, if she talks any more of escape."

"I will, ma'am," responded the respectful Mrs. Sharpe.

Mrs. Oleander ascended the stairs and went to her own room, very well satisfied with the submissive and discreet new nurse; and the new nurse descended to the kitchen, and prepared her patient's supper of tea and toast, delicate sliced ham, and raspberry preserves.

The dusk of the sunless afternoon was falling out-of-doors ere her preparations were completed, and the stair-ways and halls of the dreary house were in deepest gloom as she returned to her patient's room.

She found that unhappy little patient lying p.r.o.ne on her face on the floor, as still, as motionless as if death had hushed forever that impulsive heart. She made no sign of having heard when Mrs. Sharpe entered--she never moved nor looked up until the nurse set the tray on the table, and stooping over her, gave her a gentle shake.

"Miss Dane," she said in her stolid tones, "please to get up. Here's your supper."

And Mollie, with a low, wailing cry, raised her wan face and fixed her blue eyes on the woman's face with a look of pa.s.sionate reproach.

"Why don't you let me alone? Why don't you leave me to die? Oh, if I had but the courage to die by my own hand!"

"Please to take your supper," was Mrs. Sharpe's practical answer to this insane outburst. "Don't be foolish."

She lifted Mollie bodily up, led her over, seated her in her chair, poured her out a cup of tea, and made her drink it, before that half-distracted creature knew what she was about.

"Now take another," said sensible Mrs. Sharpe; "tea will do you a power of good; and eat something; there's nothing like good, wholesome victuals for curing people of notions."

Wearied out in body and mind, Mollie let herself be catered for in submissive silence. She took to her new nurse as she had never taken to any one else in this horrid house. She had a kindly face, had Mrs.

Susan Sharpe.

"You feel better now, don't you?" said that worthy woman, the meal completed. "Suppose you go to bed? You look tired. Let me undress you and tuck you in."

And again willful Mollie submitted, and dropped asleep as soon as her head was fairly on the pillow. Motherly Mrs. Sharpe "tucked her in" and kissed her, and then, with the remains of the supper, went down-stairs to partake of her own evening repast.

Mrs. Oleander took tea with her servants, and was very gossipy indeed.

So, too, was old Sully; so, likewise, was old Peter. The beverage that exhilarates seemed to lighten their aged hearts wonderfully; but Mrs.

Susan Sharpe did not thaw out under the potent spell of the best English breakfast tea. Silent and attentive, she ate, and drank, and listened, and responded when directly addressed; and, when it was over, helped Sally to clear up, and then pounced upon a basket of undarned hose under the table, and worked away with a will. Her energy and good-will, and the admirable manner in which she filled up the holes in the stockings with wondrous crisscross work, quite won the hearts of both Sally and Sally's mistress.

The clock struck nine; work was laid aside; Mrs. Oleander read a chapter aloud out of the Bible, and they then all adjourned to their respective chambers. Doors and windows had been secured at nightfall, Tiger and Nero liberated--their hoa.r.s.e, deep growls every now and then making night hideous.

Up in her own apartment, Mrs. Susan Sharpe's first act was to pull up the curtain and seat herself by the window. The night was pitch dark--moonless, starless--with a sighing wind and a dully moaning sea.

It was the desolation of utter desolation, down in that dismal sea-side prison--the two huge dogs below the only living things to be heard.

"It's enough to drive any one mad, this horrible place," said Mrs. Susan Sharpe, to herself; "and the very weather seems in the conspiracy against us."

She took her lamp as she spoke, and held it close to the window, with an anxious, listening face. Its solitary red ray streamed far out over the black road.

Five, ten, fifteen minutes pa.s.sed, then a sound rent the night silence--a long, shrill, sharp whistle.

"Thank the Lord!" said Mrs. Susan Sharpe. "I thought he wouldn't fail."